


Freshionary  - An essay about the „Fresh“ parasite

by Kuttie



Series: Twitchy Timeloop Sidestories [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfresh, Essays, Fresh Encyclopedia, Gen, True Fresh - Freeform, drawings included, my headcanon regarding Fresh's behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 08:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuttie/pseuds/Kuttie
Summary: This is basically a short "encyclopedia entry" about the "Fresh" parasite based on "loverofpiggies"' "True Fresh".(A few drawings by me included)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: Please keep in mind that all of this is just my (terrifying) headcanon. I’ve tried to find explanations for everything that Fresh does and even looked at several Wikipedia articles regarding parasitical behavior.
> 
> Have fun(?) reading this!
> 
> (And yes, my Undertale fanfiction “Changing Camouflage” will be about THIS kind of Fresh.)

**The parasite itself**

Its body is made of some kind of a jellylike substance. It can stretch its appendages ten times their length and is even able to abandon them at its own will. The appendages can grow back or reattach themselves when needed.

The body’s slimy surface dries out in high brightness and thus weakens the parasite’s mobility. The parasite uses the teeth around its single eye to hold on to the inner side of its prey’s skull.

The parasite feeds on the magic of monster’s SOULs by drilling the pointy tips of its appendages into the heart-shaped SOUL and drinking from it like a juice box.

As soon as the SOUL is almost dry and near death, the parasite switches over to a new host and a full SOUL. It avoids the SOULs of humans because they are too strong for it.

 

**The process of switching to another host**

As soon as the parasite spots a fitting new host and the SOUL of its current one is almost empty, the parasite moves as close as possible to its prey, sometimes imitating noises or voices to give its prey a false sense of security, and uses one or two of its appendages to keep it in place.

Then the parasite lures the new host’s SOUL out of the chest with the help of its own magic, puts the former host’s dry SOUL back to where it belongs and carries the new SOUL into the skull of the next host.

This way the parasite can keep an eye on the status of the SOUL all the time, and by moving the SOUL out of its usual place, the parasite is able to protect its precious food source from possible predators.

After carrying the SOUL into the new host’s skull, the parasite settles down and attaches itself with the aid of its teeth to the inner side of the skull and stretches its body to fill out the eye socket and imitate an eye.

The parasite prefers skeletons as hosts because it fits into their skulls very easily and doesn’t have to hollow them out with its magic.

And because the parasite wants to avoid food shortage, it never kills its hosts and always leaves before it’s too late, even if there’s no new host around, trying to find one as quickly as possible.

 

**While controlling the host**

The parasite changes its host’s clothes with its magic so that they irritate and scare off possible predators and give its prey a false sense of security. Everything it wears get its defense stat raised, too, furthermore the parasite creates a special protective hat and gloves to protect the precious SOUL even more.

While the parasite feeds on the SOUL’s magic, its own body emits parts of the magic it couldn’t use as magical residue which pours out of the host’s eyes in form of purple mist or smoke.

The parasite uses dark sunglasses to cover the SOUL, but because the SOULs tend to shine through the glasses, the parasite uses part of its magical residue to create letters that shroud this shine.

Sometimes the parasite duplicates itself instinctively in smaller form out of the magical residue. Because this offspring is usually a huge danger to its already sparse food sources, the parasite destroys its descendants as quickly as possible.

If its current host is a skeleton, the parasite creates floating eye brows out of the magical residue, too. They make it easier for the parasite to imitate emotions, since it is not able to fully understand feelings or actually feel them.

Furthermore the parasite doesn’t even want to be able to feel, because this way it would lose control of its host and itself, sending the parasite into anguish, followed by its death.

To cover the nonexistence of emotions and to avoid any suspicion by bystanders, the parasite imitates an overly happy emotion in order that it and the SOUL stay safe as long as possible.

The parasite’s smart use of random sounds and mostly unknown words intensify the desired effect.


End file.
